Heart of Obsidian

Chapter 42

“THE CENTRAL SKYTRAIN station is a target,” Kaleb said aloud, interrupting the conversation in progress. “Rush hour today.”

Nikita turned cool eyes in his direction. “If we focus our resources on the wrong target or targets, we risk exposing other vulnerable locations.”

“The information is highly reliable.” He switched his attention to the leopard alpha. “Do you have enough people to quietly evacuate the schools and check the hospitals for threats? We can’t risk tipping our hand.”

“It’s already being done. Anthony’s and Nikita’s teams are working with the packs and Mr. Wong’s network.” Lucas glanced down the table. “Vice Commissioner, is Enforcement sweeping the shopping malls and movie theaters?”

She checked the datapad in front of her. “No threats detected as yet. We cannot, however, clear these locations and assist with the central skytrain station.”

“The Arrows and I can handle the station.” Kaleb had already sent the order to Aden’s rapid response team.

The changeling alphas looked to one another, an unspoken communication passing between them, before Lucas said, “Agreed, but we’ll give you some of our trackers. If the attack is anything chemical based, they may be able to catch the scent.”

Kaleb knew those trackers would also be keeping an eye on him and the Arrows, but that was to be expected. Acceding to the stipulation with a nod, he said, We’re on our way, to the woman who stood in the center of what could become a death zone.

SAHARA spotted Kaleb entering the station, though he was wearing a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a UC Berkeley sweatshirt. Nice outfit, she teased, immediately blocking his mind from her continuing scans.

My face is well-known, but people will see what they expect to see.

And no one, she thought, expected to see Kaleb Krychek in a central city skytrain station, much less wearing an old sweatshirt and battered cap.

Listen for any hint of alarm, he told her. The Arrows are better at blending in than you realize, but Vasquez is trained to spot covert operatives.

I’ll ’path the instant I sense anything. She could not fail in her task. If this building went down, not only would hundreds of innocent people die, Kaleb might die.

It was ten minutes later that she heard from him again. The changelings aren’t scenting any chemical explosives. The bombs may be small and well hidden, or we may be looking at something quieter; Pure Psy has been known to use poison gas.

The connection between them open, she heard him give telepathic orders for all airflow conduits to be checked. I’m taking the main fans, he said to her. They’re outside, high on the building, but I have a line of sight.

Sweat dampened her palms at the idea he might be teleporting into danger. Be careful.

Always.

She had to force herself to remain in the alcove where she’d been concealed for the past half hour. When she glanced over at the jaguar who’d kept her company throughout, it was to catch an impatient look on his face. “I’m sorry you have to babysit me. I know you’d rather be doing something else.”

To her surprise, his lips curved. “I’m not impatient about watching you—I’m frustrated because I can’t scent anything that might give us a clue.”

It’s the air. Kaleb’s voice sliced into her mind. A concentrated dose of poisonous gas attached to the conduit below one of the main fans and timed to go off at rush hour.

Sahara’s throat went dry, her mind seeing the busy station go silent as people fell where they stood. Have you teleported it out?

No. It’s very cleverly rigged. There’s a risk it’ll disperse before transport is complete. I need a tech; the wolves have a skilled female who came in with their tracking team—she’s at DarkRiver HQ helping coordinate information. Ask Vaughn to contact her.

The tech was on the roof with Kaleb soon afterward, ’ported there by a dark-haired telekinetic Sahara hadn’t met, but guessed to be Judd Lauren from what Kaleb had told her of his friend’s allegiance to the wolves. A minute later, Vaughn received a call and asked her to follow him to the nearest set of public restrooms.

“Anyone in the women’s?” he asked.

Peeking in, she shook her head.

Vaughn entered and went through it stall by stall. “Women’s West 2 cleared,” he said into his cell phone just as an older woman with red cheeks pushed through the door.

“Excuse me.” She sniffed. “I know you young people like your ‘unusual environments,’ but really.” With that, she bustled into one of the stalls and slammed the metal door with a loud bang.

Sahara kept her mouth shut until Vaughn cleared the men’s restroom and indicated they had to move on to the next set. “‘Unusual environments’?” she murmured, doing her best to appear innocent. “Did she mean to imply something sexual? Where, other than the bedroom, do people exchange intimate skin privileges?”

“Talk to Faith.”

“She’s not here.”

“You’re just like an annoying little sister, you know that?” A sadness in his voice, in his eyes, that was old and worn. “Always asking questions.”

Seeing the smile that balanced the sorrow, Sahara decided not to pull back. “So?”

The smile grew wider, deep grooves forming in his cheeks. “So, talk to Faith.”

Having arrived at their destination, Sahara checked to make sure the coast was clear. Except this time, she pressed her hand against the door once inside to make sure they didn’t inadvertently shock anyone else. “You’re checking for small incendiary devices?”

A nod. “The Arrows found one at the other end of the station—cheap and easy to make, small range but big noise. Vasquez might have seeded the station with them to fool people into believing the entire place was mined to blow.”

“To delay rescue efforts once people began to collapse from the gas.” Intelligent in the most psychopathic of ways.

“Ye—” Vaughn’s sudden silence told her he’d found something. “Stay behind the wall until I give the all clear.”

Sahara didn’t argue, well aware that, protective as he’d become of her, Vaughn wouldn’t be able to focus if she flouted his command. Earlier, he’d thrust a chocolate bar into her hand with an order that she eat the whole thing. “Psychic muscles use energy,” he’d said. “And don’t even try to argue. Faith doesn’t get away with that and neither will you.”

Sahara had taken great pleasure in pointing out that he was acting exactly like Kaleb. His growl would’ve raised every hair on her body if she hadn’t been grinning and eating chocolate at the time.

“Done,” he said now, three minutes after he’d asked her to stay behind the wall. Placing the remnants of the device into his duffel bag, he rose. “Let’s go.”

They had just stepped outside when—

“—may have been compromised. Push go!”

Sahara was speaking to Kaleb even as the final word echoed in her mind. They know! Kaleb! So close to the poison, he’d never survive the exposure.

A minuscule pause that sent her heart into her throat before Kaleb said, It’s all right. We’ve defused the poison bomb. I’m in the process of teleporting the container out now.

There were three small booms on the heels of Kaleb’s words, but though people hesitated, looking around for answers, no one panicked. Acting as planned in the event of a possible panic situation, the Arrows ducked their heads and merged into the flurry of people in the station, as changeling teams moved in to cordon off the damaged areas.

Since Vaughn was one of those changelings, she heard him feed the curious a story about teenagers playing with banned fireworks. The explanation wasn’t wholly believed, but the travelers, regardless of race, relaxed as soon as they realized the changelings had the situation under control. It gave Sahara a glimpse of exactly how much San Francisco had become a changeling—specifically leopard—city.

In the end, that was the only damage done that day, but Vasquez, faceless and unidentifiable, remained in the wind. Accepting Kaleb’s offer of a teleport, the changeling trackers used the faint scent found at the fan to begin their hunt, each changeling accompanied by an Arrow who could scan for and block possible psychic attacks.

Not strong or fast enough to keep up, Sahara decided to stay at the station. “In case Vasquez or his men decide to circle back,” she said to Kaleb.

He nodded, his eyes connecting with Vaughn’s. “Take care of her.”

The jaguar male’s responding nod was quiet, the grim look he laid on Sahara after Kaleb left not the least unexpected. “He’s not the kind of man you want to be involved with.”

Sahara made a face at him. “That would be my business.”

“Sorry, doesn’t work like that.” Folding his arms, he leaned back against the wall, eyes fully jaguar. “You’re family now, little sister.”

“And look how safe you are,” she said, hands on her hips. “I’m sorry, anyone who turns into a predatory cat with big teeth and claws can’t exactly throw stones.”

Vaughn narrowed his eyes at her. “I will hurt him if he puts a single bruise on you.”

“You won’t have to,” Sahara said softly. “He’d end himself before causing me harm.” As he’d once almost done . . . her beautiful Kaleb who had bled so much she’d thought he’d do permanent damage to his brain.

“No! Don’t! Kaleb, stop!”

IT was a long day that merged into an even longer night. Kaleb stayed with the changeling trackers . . . and Sahara stayed with him. She’d left the station when it became night-quiet and gone to DarkRiver’s HQ, but remained connected to Kaleb on the telepathic plane. It was a quiet reminder that he mattered, that someone would miss him if he was gone.

Ahead of him, one of the trackers—a wolf named Drew—held up a hand. Kaleb scanned the area and pinpointed a number of Psy minds in the vicinity, but there was nothing to tell him if one belonged to the individual who’d left the scent, whether it had been Vasquez or one of his skeleton team. Then a gunshot rang out from the four-level garage to the left and he had a far smaller area to scan.

Unable to teleport to the location without a clear visual, he ran to a vehicle in front of the structure, then reached for both Judd and Aden with his mind. I need cover.

Go. Laser fire erupted from all sides, interspersed with the harder sounds of gunfire.

I can bring in more people, he said to Judd once his back hit the inside wall of the garage. No hostiles on this level.

We’ll stay out here, draw his attention. Looks like a single shooter.

Kaleb was already moving, taking extra care to ensure his footfalls didn’t echo. He was almost to the fourth level when the world went silent. Judd, update.

He stopped without warning. May have realized you’re there.

Kaleb increased his speed, aware Vasquez—if it was the leader of Pure Psy, and not one of his subordinates—had the skill to rappel down the side of the structure and once again elude capture. The bullet came out of nowhere, glancing off his upper arm. Gritting his teeth against the bruising pain, he rolled behind the protective bulk of a gleaming black all-wheel drive.

Kaleb!

He didn’t know how Sahara had sensed the blow. Bulletproof fabric did its job. I’m fine. His arm remained functional.

Risking a look around the corner, he twisted back as another bullet snapped past his head, but the quick glimpse combined with the trajectory of the bullet gave him what he needed to zero in on the location of the shooter. He rose to his haunches as the all-wheel drive took multiple shots from both a projectile weapon and a laser, safety glass cascading around him. Shaking it off, he spread his hands, palms out, and shoved every single car on this level of the garage forward in a lethal wave that left the shooter with nowhere to go.

The guns went wild as the shooter tried to take Kaleb down and cut off the flow of his telekinetic power. Kaleb easily avoided the bullets . . . until one ricocheted off a metal sign on the wall to punch into his thigh with an impact that told him it had been designed to penetrate bulletproof fabric. It did. The violent pain might have interrupted the concentration of another Tk, but Kaleb had learned to work through worse as a boy.

Gritting his teeth, he slammed the cars into the back wall, the metal scraping along the sides of the parking garage to leave deep gouges. Then came silence. Total and possibly dangerous. Sweeping out with his telepathic senses, he found a living Psy mind, but it was flickering, for lack of a better word, critically injured. He had to shift three crushed cars to get to the shooter, who lay crumpled between the wall and the twisted hulks of metal, his guns crushed, his lower body sticky and red, bones in splinters.

The only way Kaleb could know if this physically unremarkable male was Vasquez would be to tear into his mind. But even with the blood pooling around his lower body, thick and dark, the man had a look in his eyes that told Kaleb his mind was apt to be rigged to collapse if breached.

Removing the man’s knife and anything else he could use to speed up his own death, Kaleb ’ported to Sahara, after sending her a warning message, tugged the hood of her sweatshirt up over her head to shadow her face, and ’ported back with her.

Sounds had begun to echo through the garage by the time they arrived, the rest of the team doing a level-by-level sweep to make sure there was no one else hiding in the structure.

“No questions?” the critically injured male rasped on their return, blood bubbling out of the corners of his mouth.

Kaleb’s leg was bleeding badly now, the viscous liquid having soaked into the tough fabric of his pants and trickled into his boot, but he would finish this. “You’re unlikely to answer them.”

The man’s lashes came down, settled, then lifted to show he was still alive and conscious. “So you’ll stand there and watch me die, not even attempt a retraction?” Contempt in those words.

It is Andrea Vasquez, Sahara said along their familiar telepathic pathway. But this was not his final strike. That is what he calls the Phoenix Code: he’s split Pure Psy into multiple cells, each with the goal of collapsing as much of the PsyNet as possible, until only the “pure” remain—his belief system, as well as those of his followers, has altered until they now truly think that those who are “pure” are stronger. Anyone who dies was therefore not pure.

The tautology of that belief did more to disprove Pure Psy’s “rational” rhetoric than any reasoned argument.

Geneva, Sahara continued, Luxembourg, Paris, San Francisco, they were all intended to give his people time to scatter and hide deep, only to arise anew once the dust has settled. While their goal to rid the Net of the impure is paramount, their secondary aim is to instigate a worldwide war that will eliminate the weak and the “inferior.”

His legacy, as he thinks of it, is an organization with so many heads that it will be impossible to decapitate: a true hydra.